R:  A RetroFuturist Pokémon Story
by Latyon
Summary: Mysterious flashing lights in the sky have gotten the small-town citizens of Crater Town talking.  In the midst of the hysteria, a young scientist perfects his greatest invention – the Poké Ball – only to have it ripped away by a rising crime syndicate.


Chapter 1 – A Simpler Time

Crater Town, as the name suggests, is a modest gathering of humans built on the inside of a huge impact crater. The land is filled to the brim with valuable moonstone, but thus far the area had remained untapped by hungry industry. It resembles 1950s America, with a bit of a Steampunk/50s sci-fi twist. This story is mainly just something to rejuvenate my creative juices, and I plan on having a little bit of everything in it. Anything goes, baby! However, I am a big Pokémon fan so I won't stray too far from the game detail, and actually, I'm going to try to stick to the ingame Pokédex as much as possible for the Pokémon that appear in this fic (you know, the one where Haunter can lick someone and cause them to shudder for the rest of their life. The Pokédex has some wild stuff in it.)

This chapter doesn't do a good job of setting up what will actually be happening in the story, so here's a paragraph to summarize. It centers around a young trainer named Jagger Silph, the son of the inventor and Pokémon researcher whose invention of the Poké Ball revolutionized the modern world, allowing even entirely wild (or, as they would later find out, legendary) Pokémon to be tamed and their unique powers to be harnessed. But it is not Luther Silph who is credited with this revolution, for his research fell into the hands of a rising syndicate known as the Rocket Organization. The Rockets begin supplying the world market, and as a result make a killing off of the sales. But their ambitious and mysterious leader realizes that there is something much more lucrative they can be doing with the Poké Balls...all of this in a world of steampunky retro sci-fi fun. It'll get dark at points, and probably a little insane at others – there's just so much in the world of 50s sci-fi. Godzilla (like that episode with the giant Tentacruel), aliens (Deoxys, Clefairy?), etc. It's a bit of an unconventional fic, but I think it sounds pretty neat.

Without further ado…

"What is it, Dad?" a little boy asked, flying from the front door with an almost stupidly excited grin plastered on his youthful face. A thick shock of blonde was hidden beneath the wide brim of a baseball cap, still freshly dusted with dirt from the game he'd just been picked up from. More of the red soil was caked on his arms and shirt. He climbed onto the patio's white railing and, blocking the sun with one hand, he stared into the dying light.

His father's reaction sounded stunningly unmotivated.

"Go inside."

"No, Dad! I want to see it!" the child pleaded. His father looked back, and barked in that deep Northeastern way that he often did.

"Not now, son, go inside! Ask your mother if she needs any help around the house."

"Ugh, fine, Dad."

The boy let himself down from the newly-painted white railing that rose from the edge of the patio and begrudgingly dragged his feet to the screen door. His father let a hot breath coat the lens of the gunmetal gray binoculars he held loosely to, wiping it off with the sleeve of his sweat-caked work shirt. His eyes stayed fixed on some undefined point in the open sky, the pale desert blue reflecting off of hotspots on the distant asphalt. He felt salty droplets forming on his brow beneath his coiffed hairline, in his sideburns, at the tip of his sharp nose, cascading down onto his befuddled expression, pupils unwavering from that invisible point in the sky.

"Hey, neighbor!" he heard, and he snapped his gaze to the source of the voice; an older woman, Rosaline, in a sun-dress and a wide-brimmed hat. She'd been in Crater Town for the last two decades raising three children, but they'd all moved out, leaving Rosaline and her husband – finally, they thought – to their peace. A plate of cookies rested delicately on one of her hands, and she beckoned for the father to come over and have one.

"Oh, gee, thanks, Missus Levy!" he said, smiling with the same grin his son bore.

"I heard on the grapevine that your little boy hit a home run today, is that right?"

"Oh, yeah!" his dad beamed, a repressed youth shining through in his sky-colored eyes. "It was great, Missus Levy, you should've seen it! It was the bottom of the ninth, you see, and we had boys on second and third, and- "

"Oh, sweetheart, I don't know a thing about baseball, but good for him! You should take him one of these cookies as congratulations!"

"COOKIES!" the boy shouted, sliding up from behind his father, accompanied by an overexcited pink creature that panted at his feet and leapt up against the fence at Rosaline.

"Hey there, little guy! I heard you hit a home run today!" Rosaline said to the boy. His eyes glimmered.

"It was far out, Missus Levy! It was the bottom of the ninth, and we had guys on second and-"

"Well, have a cookie! You earned it!"

iSNUB! SNUB!/i the creature barked, its pink face staring off at the distant sky.

"So Missus Levy, I have to ask you a question. I've been watching the…hey, son, go change out of your uniform. Take Bandit with you."

"Yessir. Thanks for the cookie, Miss Rosaline!" the boy shouted, running off, the pink biped waddling alongside him, pink ears fanned out against the wind. It waddled slowly, eyes peering from their corners at the approaching dusk. Something was…off.

"I've been watching the sky…well, surely you've heard people talking about seeing weird stuff at night. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"Not a clue, darling."

"Have you seen any weird things floating in the sky at all? Not airplanes, mind you, but have you seen any lights when there shouldn't have been any lights?"

Something seemed to click in Rosaline's mind.

"As a matter of fact, yes, I was seeing them the whole time you were at the baseball game, in fact! I was tending to my begonias, and I looked up just to see the clouds and I saw these –"

"Dancing lights."

"Yes, that's what I saw!"

"I saw them last night too, and the night before. This is the first time they've come out during the day. My son saw them, too, everyone at the game saw them. I can't figure them out at all."

"It's got to be some strange bird, right?"

"That's what me and Luther figure; some undocumented species of Pokémon…I just find it utterly fascinating. How many things are out there that we haven't seen."

" Yeah…they sure were pretty, those lights."

"That they were. I'm gonna head inside and have supper with my family, but it was nice to see you, if you're not preoccupied maybe you can come and join us."

"Oh, I appreciate it, hun, I still have a little bit left to do before it gets dark on us."

"All right, well, you have a good night, Missus, I'll see you sometime soon I hope."

"All right, good night, Vic."

"Honey!" came a voice from within Victor's house. "Telephone! It's Luther, he says you probably want to hear this!"

"Coming, dear!"

As he turned away from the sky, a hazy ball of green popped into view on the horizon.

"Vic, you have to come quickly. I've just…I've had a breakthrough. A stroke of genius."

"Can it wait, Luther? I'm having supper with my family…"

"Supper? Victor, supper is meaningless compared to what I've just done."

"You want me to come to the lab?"

"Yes. You have to see what I've created. We're going to be filthy rich, Victor. Kings."

The hushed tone Luther spoke in was suspect enough; and yet, Vic found his facial muscles tugging his cheeks into a dirty smile from ear to ear.

"Why are you whispering, Luther?"

"Because this must be kept absolutely secret. I'm sitting on a goddamned gold mine, Victor. Our funding problems are over. All of our problems are over. Don't you understand? Get your ass over here, you have to see this!"

"At least tell me what it is!"

"…I can't. Not over the phone. Someone might be listening."

"Man, you are paranoid! Who would be listening?"

"…"

"…Luther, are you there?"

"I'm here. Come to the lab."

iClick./i

In the center of town, dusk had already fallen. And under the cover of dusk, a large truck roared down the town's only highway. It was completely unmarked, if not for the massive red R emblazoned on the cargo door.


End file.
